Touching Eternity
by musicalsoul
Summary: Her story started on a stifling summer afternoon. As she watched the dog demon in the sky, she did not know it would come to this. --Inutaisho x Izayoi--
1. Time

_**READ ME!**_ I know, bad me, but I couldn't resist. This is about one of my favorite canon couples. We need more IxI in general (and good SessxOC ones)! Themes taken from meijitales(dot)com because I thought they fit. :D I warn thee, reader, lengths will vary. And, **for your reference**, _fudai_ daimyo are those who were allied with the ruling family/were vassals of theirs in the past. I will be using the term 'princess' to be describing Izayoi, simply because I'm not an expert on Japanese history and this is my attempt to fill in the gaps in the backgrounds of InuYasha's parents. And don't worry. All the author's notes will not be this long.

**Listening To: **Via Purifico – FFX Piano Collections – Nobuo Uematsu

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of InuYasha and do not write for profit. I only own my interpretations and OCs, if there are any. This disclaimer applies to every installment of this series.

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**Time**

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Once upon a time, as most stories start, in a land not all that far away, there lived a princess kind of heart yet firm of temperament. She was a woman of simple pleasures, one who held pride in her standing but did not use it to further her own interests; she was by no means faultless but sensible enough not to let malice get the better of her—and for that, she was respected. And, as with many other stories, this one begins when the princess in question enters the part in her life when her age is appropriate for one to become attached to a man by her father and to be given to him as a bride. Izayoi, daughter of the _fudai _daimyo Sanada no Katsuhiro, had never given much thought to the topic of marriage itself; all her life she had been prepared as a good bride and taught as much, and she regarded the ceremony as just one more necessary step in life.

She had no connections of the type that would obstruct such a union and she doubted that would change before she was married to anyone. Katsuhiro had been searching carefully for his daughter (for even if the man would not admit it, he loved her dearly and wanted the best for her), and had recently introduced her to another generous _fudai _daimyo by the name of Takemaru no Setsuna—he was a tall and handsome man, dark of feature and quick of wit, though, Izayoi was loath to find, also quick of anger. Her distaste at the last of his features was well-hidden, but, as always, a child can hide nothing from its mother; the dark-haired woman had caught on quickly on her daughter's unsettlement, and had only commented simply with _A wife must suffer more to pass than only her husband's fury._

Thus, even though the connection was neither blatant nor official, Izayoi understood her father's intentions. She had no objections. At least, she had none until a certain point in time. That point in time was an afternoon in August by our reckoning now, when the air was humid and heavy; it had been magnificently difficult to breathe when the sun reached its zenith in the cloudless sky, and the kimono she had been wearing felt more like a leaden weight than an elegant garb. She hadn't the courage to go further than the shelter of the shoji, and so she had opened them in order to admire the summer's day beyond the sliding doors. The sun and the shadows it caused were almost dizzying. There she sat, a princess in all her right, with the black hair gathered over one shoulder, brown eyes half-closed in a mixture of sleepiness and giddiness from the heat.

It had only been for a moment—the little clearing outside the shoji doors grew still and silent for one brief pause, and then the light of the sun seemed to be blocked out by a great shade. Izayoi heard a low hum, one that resounded in her ears and jarred her jaw. A sort of pressure filled the air that promised power and the unknown; and the human maiden knew that a youkai was close.

Forgetting all the warnings of her father and her mother and the cautious, flighty handmaidens, Izayoi leapt to her feet and stood by the door, leaning on it carefully and turning her gaze to the sky. She got there just as a vast silhouette hurtled by overhead, making the tops of the trees sway with the wind it left behind. The breeze stirred her hair and some strands whipped across her face, though she did not pay heed to them: her attention was upon the shape that was quickly fading into the horizon, and her mind was under a haze of awe.

What a creature it had been! Huge and silvered, like a figure cut from a legend; she had never seen such a splendorous demon—her experience lay with the dumb, vicious, ogre-like fiends which her father's men warded off and Takemaru killed—but never one like this. She hardly knew why it had fascinated her so much, and the side of her which was obedient and abided by the rules of propriety told her to leave it be.

The chances of seeing the same dog-demon again were close none. Still, the seeds of curiosity and wonderment had been sown. One can ignore those for a while, but eventually they can no longer be disregarded. Watered by thought and sunned by already-gathered wisdom, they become a formidable force.

For all a cared-for shoot needs to grow is time.


	2. Cherry Blossoms

_**A/n:**_ I'm really tired of the cliché approach to flowers in general. *sigh* This is my take on it. Review, pretty please?

**Listening To: **Dearest – Ayumi Hamasaki, String Version

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**Cherry Blossoms**

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This was the season when the green was covered with budding sakura, and the courtyards of their winter abode were awash with a cerise tide; the servants routinely cleared the space in an effort to gather the petals before they wilted and spoiled the scene instead of adding to it. However, she was both fairly unmoved, and, dare she say, _bothered_ by the onslaught of blossoms. None of the workers threw odd looks at their princess when they saw the almost-grim set of her jaw. Her father was not present, as he had gone on a journey to the coast for business; he would return in three days, five at the most. Her mother did not reprimand the unladylike expression she wore when they were alone, for the wife of the daimyo was absorbed in her own remembrance.

On a sunrise lone and miserable with cold and rain long ago, the Lady of the house had given birth to a little girl, much to the relief of the midwife—who had nearly buckled with fatigue at the Lady's long labor and her neediness (to think she was not the one giving birth, either!)—and all the other members in the household. Lord Katsuhiro, though he did not admit it, was more than just a little disappointed that the newly welcomed life was not male, but he did not allow that to pass the rock-solid mask he was used to wearing.

Though the Lady was exhausted and weary to the last fiber, she smiled through the sheen of sweat veiling her lovely face and clutched her first daughter's hand, paying no heed that the young girl was as pale as the _washi_ in the shoji doors. It was not long before she asked to see her child, and the midwife gratefully presented the wailing babe to her; after a general sanitization of both room and mother, the father was allowed into the area.

Izayoi remembered the way that the Lady had taken the newborn into her arms and, although not too expressive of affection, the movement had been heartfelt: proof that her work of nine long months was over and another was just beginning. The time after that slipped by like running water through fingers, and it was punctuated by nights of sleeplessness due to the cries of the young one, who was more often hushed by its mother (rather rare) than the midwife. Sometimes the princess would find the Lady sitting with a bundle in her arms by the doors in the mornings that were gray but also pink with a promise of spring; once, when they were open, and she heard her mother whispering low sentences and little wisdoms into the child's ear. The princess hadn't the courage to reveal herself, and instead had retreated to her chambers, unsettled by the sting in her usually calm heart.

Tiny Natsue grew at an alarming rate, becoming very alert and, arguably, intelligent in a very short time. Izayoi watched as her mother helped the bubbly toddler walk her first clumsy steps across the tatami mats, and something in her throat tightened at the sight of the pudgy fist closed around the Lady's slim fingers. The midwife had only smiled fondly and remarked that Izayoi had been a silent, composed child; and though undeniably sweet as most all children were, she was neither as loud nor as explosive as others (yet to be disciplined) were. And as Natsue gave a babyish giggle and took one, two, three more wobbly steps towards the shoji and the openness that lay outside them, Izayoi realized with a jolt that the uneasiness within her was the first traces of the covetousness she had vowed never to feel. But like a good daughter, she had remained in her kneeled position and observed attentively as the Lady and the attention she had in no way known she wanted walked out the door hand-in-hand with a tot.

It had happened only a few days later.

A warm night had turned into a hellish nightmare when Natsue refused to settle down. When the Lady reached for her or so much as touched her belly, the babe would howl and scream in pain and writhe on her place on her mother's futon. The midwife had been the first to arrive, succeeded by a sleepy-eyed Izayoi; she deduced that someone had fed the child something bad (and how the Lord had been enraged when he heard this), hence little Natsue's distended gut. The sun had not even peeked over the mountain Fujiyama when the crying began to die down and she no longer protested against her parent's hold. Now and then she would gurgle and spit resignedly, but otherwise she was soundless. The princess had nearly fallen asleep, leaning against the wall, and indeed she did for a while; for her next wakening was brought on by a rustle and a strangled moan that disrupted her even breath with anxiety.

Izayoi had never seen her mother shed a tear before. Seeing the dignified Lady with her head bent over and her untended black hair spread over the back of her night-kimono, hanging over her face, she wondered if this was the same woman that had raised her. The Lady cut a stark silhouette before the paleness of the shoji doors, set aglow by the first touch of dawn's light, and her feet were lost beneath her rippling garment; the doors themselves had been pushed open and past them showed a world flooded with petals of pastel pink, one that crept to the entrance with soft, beckoning hands of reborn spring.

The line of the Lady's shoulders shook as she curled forwards to shield what she was holding, and the realization of what had happened cut the very air from Izayoi's lungs. She dared not move, lest she disturb the sleeping midwife beside her or the grief-stricken Lady. Perhaps she could not move. She found that even when she thought of it years into the future, she did not have a solid answer. The image of her mother's outline wracked with stifled sobs and the lifeless bundle held in her arms haunted her sleep even now; the Lady had always been a relatively happy woman in her mind, but a woman that had never shown emotions in extremities. She could still hear the whisper of the Lady's hushed words to her little one in her dreams, and she could still recall the burn of tears running down her cheeks at the farewell and the fury in her that she _still_ felt that accursed greed even when Natsue lay half-dead in her mother's arms.

"Look, little one. Half an hour spent watching the spring is worth a thousand gold pieces."

And when the sunlight reached the tops of the sakura trees and turned the light falling to the ground shell-pink, Natsue turned her large, glazed eyes to her mother's face, took a short breath, and departed from the world of the living.

With this memory alive in her mind, Izayoi reached out a hand and placed it on the bark of the tree before her, not needing to let her eyes travel downwards to know what lay below her. The blossoms swaying above her made her feel ill, for all she could envision whilst seeing them was the grieving Lady; and all she could hear whilst listening to the wind between the branches were the sounds of mourning unfit for one with a reputation to uphold. Lost in a time gone, Izayoi took no notice of the footsteps approaching her: and when she did, she assumed it was one of the servants sent to bring her back, for Lord Katsuhiro had pronounced her with an incurable wanderlust of the grounds and she was often brought back to the house by an apologetic vassal.

Prepared for words of "You mustn't stray too far," and "The dangers beyond the gates are many," Izayoi turned slowly and with a sigh of acceptance.

She was expecting to see everything but what her vision was met with.


	3. Story

_**A/n:**_ First impressions and hurrah, dialogue! Sort of. And thank you for the reviews. :) You guys make my day.

**Listening To:** Goshinboku – Kaoru Wada

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**Story**

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When she was small and still believed that most of the entities in the world were good and benevolent, the Lady would take Izayoi into her lap and tell her of legends that took place in far and distant lands; brave warriors would walk in her dreams those nights, katana at the ready to cleave evil youkai into two. One could imagine the Lady's surprise when her tiny daughter turned about in her grasp and stared up at her earnestly, brown eyes hard with thought. "Mama," she would say questioningly, "does the demon have family too?" And the Lady would only quietly respond that those things didn't matter, and that demons were envious, wicked creatures that could be very smart but, even so, could not see past their noses, misshapen or perfect. That, even though they were strong and fast and fearsome, they did not have a heart and did not love like humans did. The young Izayoi was not pleased with the Lady's answer. She was a firm believer that there must have been one demon different from the rest. Not all of them could have been bad.

Now, faced with the very personification of her mother's stories, Izayoi was at what humans and demons alike would call a loss. Her logical mind told her that even though this was her father's estate, that did not stop any youkai from wandering onto—or, indeed, entering—the premises. She knew one detail, though: the farthest thing from her mind was whether the being standing a yard away had a family. The color seemed drained from the rest of the world; Izayoi did not know what to do first. Go mindless with fear for her life or drop to her knees to beg for it. And none could blame her for her first, panicked thoughts, for he was a tremendous sight outfitted in his full armor and speckled with dragon's blood. She felt quite small at a head-and-a-half shorter, clad in a voluminous and formal kimono whilst the demon-man opposite her boasted spiked pauldrons and breastplate and a trail of snow-white fur thrown over his right shoulder.

She was sure that if her eyes widened any more they would pop out of their poor sockets. The demons she had been told of were deformed creatures that walked on clubbed feet and crept around homes and villages in the dead of night, groping for the innocent and guilty and thirsting for blood. She did not doubt that a good majority of demons were just like that—but she had never expected one to have such a _human_ countenance. Of course, the scar-like stripes slashing his cheeks and the unnaturally golden eyes detracted from the overall human appearance; her gaze traveled downwards, where one clawed hand hung loosely, its sharp, tapered nails crusted over with dark blood.

Neither spoke. Izayoi was becoming increasingly aware of her quickened breathing, feeling that her kimono was suddenly restricting. She wondered if he could hear her heart beating hastily in her chest, fluttering against her ribcage like a bird beating its wings against the bars of its confines. She did not move to swipe the petals that had collected on her shoulders. Izayoi inhaled, feeling the first stirrings of dizziness rise up to her head—

"Mistress Izayoi!"

The stillness in the air shattered, and all at once the youkai was reaching for one of the swords at his left side, the layer of dried blood between his fingers cracking. She almost turned to face the direction from where the voice had come from, but barely stopped herself from doing so. Her throat had gone miraculously dry.

"Mistress Izayoi, where are you?"

Her train of thought was swift and perhaps slipshod, and the words were leaving her mouth before she could fully understand what she was doing.

"Here, Kiyo." She could hear the youkai shifting.

There was a pause, and then steps, faster than before. "Are you alright, Mistress Izayoi?"

"Fine!" she answered, this time truly turning around and moving away as speedily as her garment would allow. "I am fine. What is the matter?"

Kiyo's relieved face came into view as she rounded the bend of the carefully arranged pebble path, leaving the sword-bearing demon behind. The servant gave a sigh of relief at the sight of her Lady's daughter. "I thought I would not find you," Kiyo said. "The Lady calls for you, Mistress."

"Well, then, we shall go to her."

And though Izayoi busied herself with the trivial thought of what her mother would want with her, she still could not shake the strength of the youkai's gaze from her mind. Again the logical part of her brain made an appearance in her consciousness, saying that she would probably never meet the demon again. But despite that, Izayoi could not help but think that it was not so.


End file.
